


A Weapon in the Right Hands

by Tammany



Series: Mary Morstan Stories [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Canon Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Speculation, character backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a Mary Morstan story.</p><p>I like Mary Morstan. </p><p>This story attempts to develop a plausible, though obviously speculative, backstory for her that's in keeping with canon as we currently know it, and with extracanonical comments made by Moffat. It's geared to Mary as an honest player in the Great Game: assassin, disillusioned liberal democrat, renegade from the CIA. It's got a bit of foreshadowing involved, and toward the end it meshes with canon during Study in Pink, as Mary's "known" history suggests that SiP and Mary's inception may land in similar time-frames....and because it let me play with canon as well as pure speculation.</p><p>Warning: there are two separte time lines that merge during the section that's February with flashbacks to January. Up until the merger there is January--which is the story's prequel events--and February, which is really the story-proper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Weapon in the Right Hands

 

January, 2010

“You have your target, Agent Galway, and you have your orders. Any questions?”

Quite a lot of questions, she thought. She suppressed her shiver, though, and didn’t ask. Asking was not appreciated, these days. Instead she pulled the thumb drive across the table and slipped it in her pocket. “No, sir.”

“We’re assigning you Kavanaugh as your anchor man,” her handler said. He glanced around the restaurant, eyes hidden behind clip-on sunglasses snapped over his light-weight oval glasses. He looked out of place in his G-man suit: black jacket, black trousers, white shirt, shoes polished to a fare-thee-well. “He’ll be in touch through your usual lines of contact. Feel free to call on him for any support you need.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, pondering her current situation. She turned and flagged down a waiter as he went by. “Is anyone going to take our order?” The boy was classic New York. She just knew if she asked him he’d turn out to be auditioning for the chorus of the summer stock tour of _Lion King_ , and taking part in Circle-in-the-Square’s internship program. He was slim, so mixed-race he was everything and nothing, with blond cornrow braids, wearing black stovepipe jeans and a white shirt with a Maori necklace in the open neckline, and with a white towel tucked around his waist as an apron.

She taught kids like this every day.

Almost every day.

Every day she wasn’t…on assignment.

“Don’t worry about me,” her handler said, slipping out of the booth with a frown. “I’m off. If I’m lucky I’ll catch the next Acela Express to D.C. and not waste any more time up here.”

“It’s New York City,” she said, dryly. “Hardly the hinterlands.”

His black, dark lenses stared at her, his face expressionless: the classic fish-eyed look of the Beltway native convinced that nothing properly _American_ happens more than fifteen miles north of the southern border of Maryland, or thirty miles south of the northern border of Virginia.

Oh, and in Mainstreet, USA, that mythic land of patriots and puritans.

All else was the howling treasonous wilderness, devoid of the virtues of the republic.

“Your loss, sir,” she said, “but they make a great reuben and the egg cream is to die for.”

She might as well have been offering him raw lamb liver and fermented mare’s milk.

Which, she thought, she might even be able to buy here in the City if she just figured out the right neighborhood. She watched her handler’s back disappear through the door, hand already rising to flag a cab to take him to Central Station for the fast train home.

“What can I get you?” the waiter said, having politely stayed against all reason.

She smiled. “Chopped liver on rye, egg cream, coleslaw on the side. Trying out for _Lion King_?”

“ _Beauty and the Beast_ ,” he said with a smile, and disappeared into the bustle of the deli.

She nodded to herself. She fished the slim thumbdrive with its encoded information out of her pocket, and put it on the Formica tabletop in front of her. She…pondered.

February, 2010

The office was dim—a grotto pierced by shafts of falling sunlight. The effect was dramatic and distinctive, giving the odd sense of having entered a sacred precinct hidden from the world. An oracle’s shrine.

The man on the other side of the wide desk, then, must be the oracle himself. He wasn’t quite what she’d expected of a legend. He was tall, though not towering…still, at a scant 5’4” she found  his 6”-plus height was quite tall enough. He was dressed in a pristine, beautifully cut suit the color of sand in sunlight. He was slightly balding, and what hair he had was ginger-rust. His face was puckish: shield-shaped, with a short, sharp chin, wide mouth, long, drooping nose, and small, mischievous eyes that hid more amusement than his attempt at hauteur was intended to suggest. She was good at reading those subtle tells, though.

Judging by the sense of racing awareness she picked up from him, he was good at it, too. She sat primly in the heavy metal armchair in front of the desk—an odd thing that, to her eye, belonged in a garden rather than an office. But she wasn’t complaining: she’d sat in far more uncomfortable pieces of furniture in her time. Sat on her haunches in sand. Sat in the muck of a marsh, once. Wrought iron in a dry, comfortable office wasn’t exactly torture.

She twitched.

No. Definitely not torture.

She cleared her throat, waiting for him to say something. Anything.

He appeared to have mastered silence. Damn him…

She cleared her throat again. “My companion?”

“Safe,” he said. “We’ve placed her temporarily in a safe house. My people are in the process of creating a workable cover persona for her even as we speak. She should be secure and settled by the end of the month.”

The voice was a medium tenor, a bit on the reedy, aristocratic linen-and-lavender end of things, but beautifully modulated. Her training had her riffling through the minor dialect markers: South England, rural, but educated and grew up in an upper-class family. Gentry, not actually aristocratic, but old blood, old money. None of the obvious markers for Eton or Harrow—if he’d gone to either he’d gone late, after his primary accent had formed. London itself had left a greater trace on his language than school had, though his pattern was Oxbridge.

That wide mouth flicked. “Don’t trust what you hear, my dear,” he said, and suddenly he had a different voice, a different profile: still Oxbridge, but she’d have assumed upper-middle-class professional parents, King’s College for his preparatory schooling, and a long period away in Eastern Europe somewhere…somewhere with a Slavic language. Then, “You’re not the only one versed in linguistics—I’ve found it a useful discipline over the years.” This time he was middle-class London, maybe even lower-class, a scholarship boy who’d made it to Oxbridge on his talents, and adapted his speech to match. There was a trace of an American inflection—someone who’d spent time working with the CIA or FBI.

“You’re good,” she said, in open admiration. “But, then…” she cocked her head, and chuckled. “I’d be disappointed if you weren’t.” She sighed, and prepared herself. “I suppose the next step is to discuss who I am.”

“No,” he said, smirking slightly.

“No?”

He shook his head. One hand reached casually into his trouser pocket, and drew out a thumb drive—a chubby silver one. He held it up so she could see it, then tossed it lightly across the room, telegraphing the move, giving her plenty of opportunity to see it coming. She snatched it effortlessly out of the air and looked at it.

A.G. RA

“Ann Galway; Risk Assessment,” he said, then.

She drew a breath and turned the drive over and over in her hand. “That saves time,” she said, eventually.

“Somewhat.”

“What next?” she asked.

“That depends,” he said. “What are your goals?”

She shrugged. “None, at this point. I did what I set out to do. I got Hayat here alive.”

“Do you want political sanctuary?”

She shrugged again. “I…suppose? Do you want me working for you?”

“On a freelance basis?”

“I suppose you could call it that.”

His eyes were cold…but, then, some people called him the Iceman. “We’ve occasional use for freelance talent,” he said. “In all honesty, though, I prefer to find less…final…solutions than your training and recent assignments would suggest.”

“Me, too,” she said, wearily.

“Yes,” he said, and leaned back, hands folding over his belly. He studied her. “If your record didn’t make that quite clear we would not be having this discussion.”

“Don’t like wild card talents with assassin skills in your home territory?”

“Not really, no.”

She gave him a crooked smile. “Can’t say I blame you.”

“How are your own language skills?”

She thought a moment, then zeroed in on the voices she’d heard in the streets on the way through London. She closed her eyes, finding the tones, setting the rhythms and inflections in her mind, locating the center of balance for tongue, for nasal tones, for gutterals. A second later she thought she had a passable, if not inspired Ilford accent. “Good enough. Nothin’ to write home about.”

His eyes narrowed. “The rain in Spain?”

“Mainly on the plain, guv.”

“Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire?”

“Hain’t no place for ‘urricanes.” By then she was blatantly playing, knowing her first shot had been sufficient to reassure him of her skill. Now it was linguistic jazz…

He snorted. “Impressive. You’ll pass—which is far more than I can say of the majority of your fellow agents sent to me with assurance of their ability to ‘blend.’” He tapped lightly on the top of his desk, thinking, then said, “And how do you feel about probation, my dear?”

“Better than about automatic incarceration?”

“How pragmatic of you.”

“’Pragmatism’ is my middle name, sir.”

“No.” He smiled—an ice-dagger of a smile. “Your middle name is Madeleine. Ann Madeleine Galway. At least, it has been for the past fifteen years. Ready for a change, Agent Galway?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not really…though I’m not fussy about what we call you. However, we’ve got one persona that’s already close to something you can carry off. Mary. Mary Morstan. Can you live with it? We’ve been putting her together for about a year, now."

“I’ll give it probation,” she said with an ironic smile.

Her host—her protector, her employer, her patron—smirked in return, cool eyes never ceasing in their appraisal. “Yes. Very good. And we’ve got a bit of freelance work for you to start with…”

January, 2010

She’d been watching her assigned target for three days, now. The woman lived on Ovington Avenue, in Bay Ridge. Her name was Hayat Daulat Khel. According to the files Ann Galway had been given, she was supposedly a moderate Muslim working as a translator for a variety of governmental and corporate bodies with…interests…in the Middle East.

According to the files Ann Galway had been given, she was also a traitor: an embedded Qaeda spy, feeing information to her associates overseas, transferring funds for them, and providing covers and support for agents they smuggled in. She was thirty-six years old, born in what was then Pakistan—and was now Bangladesh. Her parents had fled to America in the year following the division, choosing to be Muslims in modern America rather than in what they saw as permanent prisoners of the poverty of Pakistan.

Daulat Khel had grown up Pakistani-American, in that limbo between cultures—too integrated into her parent’s culture to be quite fully American, too American to be comfortable with traditional Pakistani Islam. She’d married traditionally, but unhappily. Her husband had fled America in 2002, leaving with the family’s young son on what was supposed to be Hajj. The two had not been heard from since, though the files Ann reviewed suggested rumor of them was heard in Afghanistan, and that Hayat was in communication with her missing spouse and child, a willing accomplice in ongoing efforts against America and against American nationals overseas.

Ann followed the woman, carefully. She was fluent in Pashtun, and plausible and convincing speaking English with a broken Pashtun accent. It was simple to slip in brown contacts and disappear into a dark shalwar kameez and hijab. She was short, slight, and convincing enough to pass in spite of fair skin. She disappeared in the Muslim neighborhood.

She’d had to take time off from her work at Columbia…but Columbia was accustomed to that. Her role as a tenured member of the linguistics department with standing commitments as a translator for the Federal government gave her more than sufficient wiggle room.

For the first few days it was a pleasure. She shopped in the little Pakistani shops, picking up black cardamom, fennel, asafetida, saffron, halal goat meat, strained yogurt. She sat on the stoops of the old brownstones and ate simple street food. She listened, enjoying the constant pleasure of daily-life overheard. It didn’t matter what language people spoke: most of what they had to say was so joyfully ordinary and human. Who’s marrying whom. The price of chicken these days, it’s a scandal! Have you seen that Mirza boy? Shames his mother, he does, dressed like that and chasing after American girls at the clubs! Oh, there’s a sale on saris over at Patel’s! The pink one, yes, I think the price-tag said ten dollars…

By the end of the week Ann could have pointed out five people she thought the Agency should be watching, eight more who she suspected were gullible dupes, supporting Qaeda operations without awareness of how their time, resources, and financial aid were to be used…

And then there was Hayat Daulat Khel, who’d fought a bitter, hissing battle with a cousin in the cafeteria on the corner, the two rattling so fast anyone less fluent than Ann would have lost the thread of debate entirely. Hayat Daulat Khel, who insisted that it was against God and the Prophet to support Qaeda, and who cried desperate, helpless tears after he less convinced cousin left.

Hayat Daulat Khel, whose backstory appeared to have been altered.

Hayat Daulat Khel, whose involvement in American efforts in Afghanistan was more complicated than it appeared on a CIA-approved thumb drive.

Hayat Daulat Khel, whom Ann Galway was supposed to kill publically on February 26, the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. Upon whom she was to plant evidence of treason, to ensure there were no unpleasant journalistic misunderstandings about the woman’s activities—and no unsettling outcry.

On January 25th Ann Galway disappeared from the eyes of the world. She was not seen. She did not travel. She spent no money. She made no phone calls. She was not spotted on the net.

Instead Tweed Peckham, ten years Ann Galway’s junior, a vivid red-head with a bawdy laugh and a history plain as the Syracuse suburb in which she lived, arrived at the address of Anton Jefferson—journalist, scholar, and spy.

When he opened the door of his D.C. apartment, Tweed Peckham pushed past him, saying, “You have no idea what I would do for a boilermaker, sweetie.”

Anton Jefferson grabbed his backup, top secret, private-emergency wallet and prepared to follow Tweed into deep cover, because they’d long since agreed that if you needed a boilermaker, you needed to consume it in privacy. Absolute, CIA-proof privacy.

February, 2010

The two women put up their hand weapons and studied the six-bullet arrays on the two targets.

“Nice cluster,” the tall brunet said to the smaller woman. “No survivors listed, eh?”

Mary Morstan, formerly Ann Galway, risked a wicked little smile. “I’m hell on firing range dummies.”

“I’ll remember that next time one comes after me,” the brunette said.

“Not like you need me to cover your butt,” Mary said.

“’Cover my arse,’” the brunette corrected her. “Or bum. Butt’s used, but far less commonly.” She snorted. “Why is it that the rude stuff’s so hard to get down?”

“We’re used to saying it with our censor’s lowered. It’s hard to censor what’s not intended to be censored,” Mary said. “Thanks for the pointer. I’ll work on it. How am I doing on the whole?”

“Not there yet. You remember to strip the ‘r’ from ‘fear,’ but forget to add it to ‘law’ and ‘idea.’”

“I’ll work on it…Anthear-deah,” Mary said, and grinned at the other agent’s snort. “I’ll get there. By the end of the month I’ll at least pass as having grown up in a mixed-up neighborhood—but an _English_ mixed-up neighborhood.”

“Oh, you’ll get by most of the time already.” Anthea hung up her ear protectors and led the way back out to the supervisor, making sure she and Mary both handed their weapons in properly. “You’re pretty good. The boss is pleased with you.”

“Pleased enough for me to start my assignment?”

“Today, believe it or not.”

Mary blinked. “Oh,” she said. She hadn’t expected to be set free to work professionally again. Not without more notice.

Anthea smiled. “Come along. Today you’re just going to get a view of your little lost lamb.” She led the American renegade down to the car park, to a cheerful little red Mini Cooper with tinted windows. “He hasn’t seen this one before, so it should be safe to sidle right on past him,” she said. “Have to keep changing around, though. That’s the first rule with this one, by the way: assume if you’ve been in sight, he’s not just seen you, he’s made you. Hide when you can, and use every disguise trick you know.”

Mary whistled. “That good?”

“That good.”

Anthea drove them jigging and jogging around inner London, chattering into her headset the entire time, apparently in contact with staff tracking their subject using the CCTV, and through direct observation on the part of field agents and informants. Eventually Anthea smacked Mary’s arm lightly with the back of her wrist. “Next block. Tall, thin, coat to die for, head of curls you’d pay a fortune for at a salon. Watch him. Really, really watch him—how he moves, everything. He’s good at disappearing. Sometimes the only thing that gives him away for me is the way he turns his head, or raises his arm to flag a cab.”

Traffic was conveniently slow, and they rolled sedately down the block, heading in the opposite direction from the subject, who was on foot. Mary studied him. He was like a human giraffe, or one of those supermodels who wafted down the cat walk on built-up platform shoes, so tall and slim it was a wonder they didn’t need buttressing to stay upright. The coat rippled around his calves, seeming almost to shift into slow motion, the better to show off his elegance and grace. Everything came together: collar turned up, scarf tied with a lazy, dashing lark’s head knot, hair fluttering in the breeze, eyes shaped by a sculptor and set above cheekbones that had to be his masterwork. It was the kind of face that was beautiful through its peculiarity, like either of the Hepburns.

“I could get to hate that man,” she said to Anthea, in mixed awe and amusement.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Anthea grumbled. “Wait till he spots you, gets you tangled in a crowd, and swans off with a smart-arsed little wave goodbye, cool as you please, and twice as pretty as you are. Believe me, then you’ll really hate him.”

“And you say I’m supposed to be keeping him alive,” Mary said. “Who’s out to kill him?”

“Anyone who’s had to share the room with him more than ten minutes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Don’t ask. I’m serious. Don’t. You only need to know one thing.”

“What?”

“He matters to Mycroft Holmes.”

Mary sucked in her breath and blew it out in a long, stunned whistle, thinking of that beautiful, wicked-looking young man, and the elegant spymaster in his exquisite suit.  “Well, now, ain’t that a bitch?”

January, 2010

 

They were both experienced pros. They separated, morphed through alternate identities, disappeared into crowds, doubled back and forth, retrieved devices hidden away to determine if they were bugged, or chipped, and ran every trick they knew to evade enemy eyes before coming back together in a little motel cabin off the I95. Jefferson, now going as LeVon Brown, brought a bag of NC-style BBQ from a rib-joint over in Wilson. Ann, now going under the name of Wendy Klimkevitch, had brought two sixes of beer, a big bag of chips, and a bag of Fritos™, along with several containers of store-bought salsas and dips.

They divvied up the goodies before even attempting to discuss business.

“Gawwwwwd,” Wendy said, melting after her first bite of spare-rib, “I gotta say, if we’ve got to drink boilermakers, it’s great do it in style.”

LeVon grunted agreement, as he heaped coleslaw over a serving of pulled pork. “Damn right. If this is our last meal at least it’s going to be a good one. So—what made you pull the emergency cord, girl?”

Wendy proceeded to tell LeVon quite a lot about Hayat Daulat Khel….and then reached for the brand-new laptop she’d brought along just to link to the brand-new, and hopefully untraceable internet connection she intended to bring online.

“Don’t bother,” LeVon said, eyes sober. “I know what you’ve found. I probably know what you haven’t found yet, too. You learn about the Blackwater link, yet?”

“Uh. No. She did translation work for them?”

“Among other groups of interest.” He sighed. “She started out wanting to document something she thought was important and good. She ended up…”

“Wait a minute. Document?”

He looked at her. Then he raised his hands, as though aiming a camera, pushed down an imaginary button, and clicked off an imagined photo. “They were using her all over Afghanistan. Military, paramilitary, secret service. And for a long time no one even thought about her and her camera: she was so obvious about it all, and so excited. She believed it was going to bring peace to the Middle East, and freedom to her part of the world. Her husband’s crazies would be defeated. Her son brought home. Her family free to return to a bright new future. America revenged. Liberty exported to the yearning masses. All of it. Every word any PR spin-doctor ever wrote. And she was going to document it all.”

Wendy closed her eyes. “And instead?”

He shrugged. “A lot more than she thought. A lot more than she realizes. She still believes most of it. But she’s got photos. So many photos. And interviews with idiots who talk too much.”

“She’s not a traitor.”

“No. An honest, if somewhat clueless patriot.”

The silence fell, then.

Wendy ripped off another three ribs from the plank, pulled them apart, and started sucking meat off the bone, scowling as she tugged and pulled and licked.

“What do they want you to do,” LeVon asked.

She met his eyes, and said, “You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah,” he said, quietly. “I do.”

She saw his hand move toward his hip, and sighed. “If you’re already reaching, friend, then you already know what they want. The only thing you don’t know yet is what I’ll decide to do about it.”

He cocked his head infinitesimally.

She cleaned off another bone, thinking, then said, “Pass me another Sam Adams.”

He slipped a bottle from the six-pack and handed it to her. She opened it and took a pull. “I’m a CIA officer,” she said. “I swore an oath.”

He relaxed, and smiled. “You have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that, Agent Galway.”

She smiled at him, and said, “You have no idea how relieved I am to know you waited to hear me say it. Hand me a tub of that coleslaw.” She settled on the weary mattress and grabbed the TV remote. “So. That was a lot quicker than I expected. Is there a game on? Might as well make this trip worth something, after all. Ribs and a game would go a long way to make up for all the trouble I went to.”

“Playoff game, Colts against the Ravens—here, gimme the remote.”

Over the next two hours they ate BBQ, munched chips, drank beer, argued over plays, each sprawled on one bed in the shabby little roadside cabin motel.

In the third hour Wendy slipped the mickey into LeVon’s fifth bottle of Sam Adams.

By the fourth hour he’d had the second dose, just before he passed out, and she was searching him top to bottom, ensuring he had no trace or chip anywhere on his body or his equipment. And then she carefully, thoughtfully cuffed him to the bed so he could get at a pitcher of water, or rotate to pee into the empty ice bucket, but not reach the phone.

She paid for the cabin for the next three days with a grin and a wink and a not at all subtle hint that any hollerin’ and shoutin’ from cabin 8, out at the end in the pine woods, should be ignored by anyone with a single romantic bone in his or her body. “Honeymoon sex,” she grinned. “Nothin’ like it—and I should know. It’s my third time ‘round!”

She was fairly sure she had something approaching two days before he worked himself loose and was able to report back in. By then she had to have contacted Hayat Daulat Khel, convinced her of her danger, and gotten them both out of the country and to safe haven…which was a challenge.

Where in the free world was a former CIA agent and a woman who knew too much about operations in Afghanistan over the past decade to find safety, after all? Was there anyone who could stand against the United States secret service, when it had a world class hissy?

February, 2010; Flashbacks to January, 2010

Mycroft Holmes had been as good as his word, the newborn Mary Marston thought, as she turned the silver thumb drive with her initials over and over in her palm. Within a day she had been given new papers, a modest but workable income, a flat in a reasonable neighborhood—working class, but safe and pleasant, a family neighborhood. She had clothes, and furniture, an Mr. Holmes had even sent over a list of his own favorite take-away restaurants. Or if not his, he’d at least bothered to ask his staff. Thanks to him she’d had several great curries, decent Thai noodles, and the worst pizza she thought she’d ever encountered.

They’d been decent to her…decent to a woman whose own people would have her listed as a traitor, a vigilante, and a murderer by now, and who’d even be within their rights to do so. She thought about LeVon/Anton chained to the bed in North Carolina. She thought of the last, frantic moments at Hayat’s house on Ovington Avenue.

She’d never in a million years, she thought, imagined killing a fellow agent…

It had been so ugly, at the end. It had taken hours to convince Hayat of the danger—hours spend on an unsecured internet line proving to her, over and over, that the photographic evidence, the interviews, everything she’d thought to turn into a book supporting American action in the Middle East, was instead a PR nightmare for the CIA.

“But President Obama—he ended the bad parts,” Hayat said, plaintively. “He said so.”

Mary closed her eyes, gritting her teeth, desperate not to scream in the woman’s face that what elected officials of governments said and what agencies did were not the same thing…never, never the same thing. What did President Obama know but what his agencies chose to tell him? Even if he knew more, what could he do about beliefs and attitudes already woven throughout his nation’s security forces?

She’d gone through Daulat Khel’s files, churning past pictures, skimming interviews, cringing inside.

Yes. Her people would kill this woman to prevent her testimony, her witness, from ever coming into the hands of enemies…and by enemies, they’d count all journalists, most talk show hosts, and probably over 50% of all academics.

“You have to leave,” she’d growled at the other woman. Their hajibs had been thrown aside in the privacy of the home, and they scowled and grumbled at each other, afraid to raise their voices. Afraid to say too much. The apartment had to be bugged.

“You have to leave,” she’d said. “I’ve got false papers for us both. Tickets out of the country. A contact who swears he can get us to sanctuary. But you’ve got…”

That was when the door had opened—opened easily, in spite of being locked.

That was when two old friends had stood in the doorway and looked at Mary—Ann Galway—with eyes that shouted “traitor.”

That was when they’d raised their weapons and said, “Freeze. We have you covered.”

That was when Ann had proven them wrong. It was amazing how much weaponry you could hide in the soft folds of a salwar kameez, in the vast drapes of Patiala trousers.

Ivan Dresner and Joe Anderson had died quickly. Then Ann was shouting “Run, run, run. Grab the files and run,” even she herself snatched up the thumb drives she’d copied of all the material. Someone had to get the information out. Someone—someone somewhere—had to have the power, and the leverage, to turn that information into something that could bring the CIA’s little cadre of crazies back under control.

Now, in London, safe, sitting on the floor of a new flat eating pad see-ew noodles and watching the telly, Mary-who-had-been-Ann prayed that “someone” was Mycroft Holmes—that the silent power moving in the shadows of MI6 could use what she’d brought to force her own homeland back into something resembling sanity.

In the meantime, there was the thumb drive he’d given her.

A.G. RA

She turned it over and over in her hand. Ann Galway. Risk Assessment. Everything Mycroft Holmes’ people knew or guessed about her. Possibly more than she, herself, knew.

Her people had been going slowly mad for a decade—ever since 9/11. Until recently she’d convinced herself that it wasn’t big; wasn’t pervasive. Or, at least, that it didn’t affect her. She was still what she’d always planned to be: a guardian.  A protector. A warrior in shadow, called into action only when nothing else would do to secure the safety of innocents. An weapon wielded by wise counselors against known evil.

She sighed, and rose, walking wearily across the too-new carpet of the sitting room. She sat at the little table she’d turned into her desk, and woke up her most recent laptop. She slipped in the thumb drive, and discovered for the first time how she’d been used.

February, 2010

They’d put her on a rota with at least five other bodyguards. It made sense: it limited the risk they exposed the subject to, it reduced the challenges of maintaining this watch without him realizing he was protected, it cut down on the exhaustion on the part of any one team member.

It became clear within her first shift that exhaustion was a likely outcome of any assignment involving the young man. The first half the duty shift was slow—stultifying. She sat inside the flat opposite the man’s residence on Montague Street and waited, and waited, and waited. She could tell he woke up—he stood in the window in his pajamas and robe for two hours, playing the violin and staring out at nothing…

Then, suddenly, she saw him racing around his apartment, snatching his coat. She barely had time to find her own, pass word to the MI6 network that the subject was in motion, and scurry down the stairs. He’d managed to find a cab by the time she reached her front door—impossible!

With the help of the MI6 network she found her way to a Met murder site, where the lanky beanstalk proceeded to do something to infuriate almost the entire investigating team—indeed, infuriate them badly enough that only direct intervention on the part of the DI in charge kept a minor riot from breaking out.

On the other hand, The Subject Most Likely also appeared to have said something useful, as within minutes of a long talk with the DI the team began to break up, leaving only the last of the forensic unit to complete recording and closing down the site.

Mary wouldn’t have seen that much if Anthea hadn’t called to let her know someone else had picked up the trail of the subject’s taxi, and instructing her to wait for an MI5 vehicle to come leapfrog her to an observation site outside St. Bart’s.

Once there she once again waited. And waited. And waited.

Only to eventually have the dubious pleasure of seeing her subject slinking out of the building attempting to conceal a detatched human leg.

“Aunty Anthea? Is this guy a ghoul or something?” she said into her pickup.

“Close enough. Forensics geek. Don’t ask. Why?”

“He’s trying to take home body parts. Large body parts.”

Anthea sighed. “You’re lucky your shift is ending. I’ll have Berkowitz take over.”

“Andy-dandy…is this guy really important to Mycroft Holmes?”

“Yeah.”

“Please. Please tell me not like ‘that.’”

Her contact gave a gurgle of laughter, and assured her, “No. Not like that.”

“He’s pretty enough.”

“No. He’s not pretty enough. Not for the boss. Not like that.”

Mary sagged in relief. “Good. I know it’s weird, but I really want to like your boss….and…”

“Yeah. Just think of him as a very, very weird matter of national security, and leave it at that.”

“Am I likely to ever have to shoot someone for him?”

Anthea was silent.

Mary sighed. “I see.”

Which left the question—could she trust Mycroft Holmes? She’d trusted her own people to use her well, to invoke her talents wisely. That trust had been misplaced.

She had no objection to being a killer. She was good at it, and there were people who needed to be dead who would only die if people like her were called into action. Soldiers were for the sunlight war—assassins for the equally desperate battle fought in shadow. She could live with that.

What she could not live with was ever again learning she’d been turned on the very people she was sworn to defend.

The subject’s codename was “Sunshine.” She’d been in England long enough to know it wasn’t precisely a compliment—but not quite an insult, either. A wry comment on a cocky, cheeky little twerp the security team seemed to hate and love in equal measure. Not quite one of their own, not quite a civilian—and always, always more trouble than he was worth, except when he was worth it.

She suspected she could have learned more….but this was probation. If they didn’t want to tell her…

“Andy-dandy, you’d tell me if he was rubbish, wouldn’t you?” she asked her patron’s protégé, knowing her voice was begging, and willing to live with that. “You wouldn’t let me be stuck as the cat’s paw again, would you?”

“He’s not that kind of rubbish,” Anthea said, firmly. “He’s a prat and a git and a complete and total twat, and sometimes I wish he’d drop dead just to spare Mr. Holmes the grief. But he’s not evil, and he is _our_ prat, git, and total twat. And he’s even been known to be helpful. You’ve not been called in to protect the devil, or even the devil’s own.”

So she watched.

“Andy-dandy,” she said over the headset one day, “do your people know he’s moving house?”

“No,” Anthea said sharply.

“221 Baker Street. Second floor, from the looks of it. He’s hauling his stuff up right now. Hired a lorry and loaded the whole lot, it looks like.”

“On my way.”

The two crouched on the rooftop opposite until Sunshine went racing off in a taxi. Anthea frowned, then, and got on the phone with their controller.

“Definite. Yes, 221B. I’m going over to rifle the place now, leaving Silverbells over here to keep watch. No No idea.”

Mary hunkered on the gritty tarpaper, peeking over the edge of the parapet façade. Baker Street, she thought—quiet, upscale, nothing she could afford, but not Belgravia or Pall Mall or Mayfair, either. A good address, not a great one. With a café under, too—how convenient was that?

A black taxi pulled up, and Sunshine slipped out, turning to shake the hand of a short, sturdy blond man with a cane who’d approached from up the pavement. The two turned to the door even as Mary muttered, “Bug out, Dandy-girl, they’re on their way up.”

She watched the two men, trying to parse what she saw. The littler man—he moved heavily, limping, but there was something in his movement that didn’t match his apparent ailment. Something wrong.

She called it in to their controller. “He’s off,” she said, frowning. “Just—off. Looks like a nice little guy with a gimpy leg. Moves like something else. Can’t explain it, but tell the tag teams to look out for him if he stays around.”

“Watson,” Anthea murmured to her a few minutes later. “Called it in already. Overheard Sunshine telling the landlady as they went up. Dr. John Watson.”

“Captain John Watson, MD,” control murmured in both their headphones—but it wasn’t control any more. It was Mycroft Holmes. “Anthea, my dear, if you could set up a meeting for me, I’ve got our crew pulling files.”

“When?” Anthea asked.

“As soon as possible.”

“Bring him in?”

“No. I think…a bit of stage play,” Holmes said, voice going distant and amused. “If the gentleman in question intends to play with….Sunshine…he’s going to have to deal well with a bit of melodrama, don’t you think?”

“Warehouse? You can play mob boss,” Anthea said, smiling, her hand steadying her headset.

“Perfect,” Holmes purred, and then he was gone, replaced once more with a rattled controller.

Anthea nodded to herself, and then glanced at Mary. “He doesn’t get to play often. I like to indulge him when I can.” She smoothed her hair back from her brow. “Look, the next few hours are going to be more paperwork and direct interview than anything. Why don’t you take a few hours off, get something to eat, and come back on for the dinner shift? Right now the boss has half of MI6 scrambling on this one. You might as well benefit from the overkill.”

February, 2010, A Black Limosine

Mycroft Holmes slid the phone from his pocket and glanced down.

_Watson returning to Baker Street-A_

_No surprise-Opinions?-M_

_Strong jaw, straight spine, not too clever-A_

_Safe for Sherlock?-M_

_If he’s as obvious in everything as he is in his pickup lines? Absolutely.-A_

_Be kind. We rattled the boy’s nerves. Finesse is a bit much to expect.-M_

_He was too stupid to be properly frightened…of you or me.-A_

_You might want to date him anyway. It’s an additional source of information.-M_

_You date him.-A_

_Not my type.-M_

_Stop smirking, dear, or I’ll make comments about Agent Laraby.-M_

_You’re still smirking.-M_

_Yeah. Me, I know what your type is. Hey, boss? About Silverbells…-A_

_Is she proving a problem?-M_

_No. Not going to, either, if you ask me. But she was burned badly.-A_

_And? Your point?-M_

_It’s going to take a long time for her to trust us.-A_

_And?-M_

_Use her lightly. Use her seldom. And let her know we prefer to keep her clean.-A_

Mycroft frowned at the phone screen. It wasn’t that the information or advice were unwelcome. But, oh, he hated it when dealings with agents got messy and muddled with feelings. It was one of many reasons he avoided abusing his agents whenever possible. An agent betrayed was an agent you could never again quite trust—because that agent would never again quite trust you. He sighed.

_Very well. Will keep in in mind. Watch over her. She appears to be a good one.-M_

_She is. Oh, and by the way: codewords for the new guy?-A_

_Yes? Ideas?-M_

_In keeping with our “S” theme for Sunshine’s lot, yeah. I do have  a suggestion.-A_

_What?-M_

_Samwise.-A_

_As in Gamgee?-M_

_Precisely.-A_

_Will take it under advisement…and thanks. Consider me amused-M_

He smiled down at the screen. He _was_ amused. Samwise Gamgee! Perfect. Short, sturdy, blond, insanely loyal, not not always the sharpest knife in the drawer. What other hobbit could you possibly cast the little doctor as, after all? It wasn’t like he was clever enough to play Bilbo Baggins, the little thief, after all…

February, 2010, Outside 221B Baker Street

Mary’d taken the time to look Watson up, and what she found didn’t make her happy. Sharpshooter. Psych issues. He’d worked the helicopters for a while, in Afghanistan. Gone down once, and had to defend the survivors until help arrived. Wounded—but they thought the limp was psychosomatic.

It was. The sonofabitch had kept up with Sunshine for block after block, chasing that damned cab—up buildings, down, climbing, jumping, leaping over gaps. So that gimpy leg was either psychosomatic…or faked. Mary shivered. She was betting on faked. She hadn’t needed that restaurant guy to show up with the forgotten cane to make her think so, either.

John Watson—Captain John Watson--moved like a soldier.

Worse, he moved like an _armed_ soldier. She was willing to swear he was carrying right now, even as he paced around the sitting room of the upstairs flat.

She wondered what was going on. The DI Sunshine worked with was up there with all his team, and they were in a swivet. She’d watched the body language. None of that team had been happy, and going by the movement she could see in the blazing, bright room, they’d made good and sure Sunshine and his new tagalong weren’t happy, either.

“Any news?” Anthea’s voice murmured in her headset.

“Still flapping around like annoyed velociraptors,” Mary said. “And—ok, is this an England-thing? Comparing nicotine patches? At least I think it’s patches. Either that or tattoos, and that DI doesn’t look like the sort to compare ink in the middle of a face-off.”

“Nicotine patches,” Anthea said with a weary sigh. “Lestrade’s trying to quit, poor bastard. Sunshine’s another matter entirely…”

“Ho, wait. Got a taxi pulling up.” Mary read the license number off for Anthea. “May not mean anything, but he’s trying to get the landlady to let him in.”

“Put a tracer on it, yeah? Just in case?”

Mary sighed, but slipped out of the alleyway she’d been hiding in, sloping down the walk, tucking a GPS tracer into the lip of the wheel well.

The headset hissed, again. “There’s a Nissan Juke just down the way. We just unlocked it. Keys on the driver’s seat. Be ready to follow.”

“You trust me to drive on the right side of the road?”

“I trust you to drive on the left side of the road, sweetness,” Anthea chuckled. “Just be ready: you’re our person on site right now.”

“Got it. Sunshine chipped?”

“He’d saw his leg off before he’d let us chip him.”

“Well then he wouldn’t have to steal bits from the morgue,” Mary pointed out.

“No—then he’d need more for purposes of comparison.”

“He’s really very stra….oh. Wait. Cabby’s coming out, and Sunshine with him. Later, toots. Get your guys on the trace—I may need to let him get well past me before I follow.”

“Done.”

The chase went well. Mary loved the convenience of having the cab being traced—she could hang back, well away from the driver’s sight lines, and still not fear losing him.

“Damn,” Anthea said. “The new guy’s following. Look, we may have to pull you off Sunshine and put you on Watson—Samwise. No idea whose side he’s playing. If he’s actually allied with a killer, you may need to shoot first.” Anthea sounded apologetic. “Sorry. We didn’t think this was going to happen.”

Mary grunted. “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Another code name for Watson? It fits the “S” pattern.”

“Nah. I like ‘Samwise.’ I hope he _is_ Samwise.” She felt a sudden weariness wash over her. “Brave. Kind. Honest. Loyal. Just a bit too thick to play dirty tricks on you.”

“You make him sound like the perfect boyfriend.”

“And you sound like you don’t agree.”

“If I were going to fall for someone, I’d have a word with the Baskerville folks about putting Mr. Holmes’ brains in Beckham’s body—with his libido tied to a convenient on-off switch.”

“Living vibrator?”

“Now-now. Play nice. Your guy’s parking, but we can’t see where he’s going. Aaaaaaand…”

“And Samwise has landed. I can see him from here. I’m parking out on the street…he hasn’t noticed me. And…he’s not sure where they are. He’s hunting, Andy.”

“Then…you hunt him.”

“Not Sunshine?”

“Sunshine can take care of himself against a pipsqueak cab driver, and we’ve got more people on the way. The boss has us on full red-alert…and the Met’s coming, too. You stick with the new guy.”

Mary slipped through the shadows of the school car park, and eased herself into the building the short blond had entered. He was moving like a predator—she could hear his footsteps, steady and strong as he loped through the halls, opening doors. She followed behind, going by sound and logic. The layout of the building was quickly apparent. His progress as much so. She caught his silhouette once, shadow on the wall, handgun picked out clear and black and deadly.

“He’s armed and he’s ready,” she whispered, hanging back to be sure her comment wasn’t heard.

There was silence for a moment, then Anthea said, “The boss wants you to take him down if there’s any doubt. We don’t know who he’s hunting.”

Mary grunted.

She didn’t know the man. She didn’t trust him, but she didn’t know him. She didn’t know Sunshine. Didn’t know the cabby. Didn’t know…

Holmes. Didn’t know Mycroft Holmes. Didn’t know who to trust.

She’d trusted before.

She’d been wrong.

She crept along on silent feet, glancing in rooms.

She found him.

He was standing, outlined by the light from beyond, staring into a brilliantly lit classroom in the building opposite. She could see them over there—tiny, like watching human ants. They were talking—peaceful. Placid. She couldn’t see what was going on—the extra distance, the slight glare off the window obscured much of the action. But it didn’t seem to be dangerous. Sunshine and the cabby having a bit of a late-night meeting, nothing more.

So why was Watson growing tense? Why was the gun coming up?

She had her orders. Her orders were to shoot.

She didn’t know what was going on. She didn’t know the players—not any of them.

Her own hand rose, weapon at the ready. The muzzle of the black Walther P99 steadied, and she contemplated her target.

An injury? She could capture him. But it would have to incapacitate him  entirely, because she didn’t dare risk him getting in a shot otherwise.

The safe move was a killing shot. It would be easy from here.

She drew in her breath, held it.

He drew in his breath, held it.

She closed her eyes as his gun fired.

Opened them again as the cabby fell. The cabby, not Sunshine.

The little blond man slumped, relieved, panting from the stress.

She slipped into the shadows of the hall, and scurried away. Her hand went to her headset. “Samwise. Call him Samwise. He shot the cabby. Sunshine’s fine. I’ll meet you by the Juke, later.”

“Understood,” Anthea said. “Thanks.”

Mary eased herself into the driver’s seat of the Juke, tucked the Walther into the holster under her jacket. She locked the doors of the car, then leaned her head on the steering wheel. Then she cried.

February, 2010, School

She heard the soft thudding tap of gloved fingers against the passenger-side window. Looking up, she saw the tall man in the trim Crombie overcoat—elegance personified. She sighed and unlocked the car doors.

He slipped in beside her, and sat, silent.

“Sunshine’s all right, yeah?”

“He’s quite well, barring ‘shock.’ If you want to believe the blanket, anyway.”

“Blanket?”

“I’m told the orange blanket is now a diagnostic tool. He’s assured DI Lestrade that if he has a paramedic blanket, he must be in shock.”

Mary didn’t respond. After a time, Mycroft said, “You didn’t obey your orders.”

“I…didn’t know who needed to be dead.”

He nodded. “We don’t always have that luxury in this business.”

“No. But…”

“But you didn’t know who to trust.”

“No.”

“You appear to have trusted the right person, though.”

“I trusted no one.”

“You trusted yourself to not-shoot. That’s no small thing, my dear.”

“And now you can’t trust me.”

“On the contrary,” he said, softly. “I can now trust you implicitly.”

“If I’d been wrong, Sunshine would be dead.”

“But I can trust you to ask.” He turned to face her. In the dim light his eyes were colorless, but no less intense. “Miss…Morstan. Mary. Do you know how rare you are? You are a weapon with not only a mind, but a conscience. You have betrayed your own people, because they were morally wrong. You have refused my orders— _my orders while you were on probation_ —because you were too unsure that I was right. I have many obedient agents, Mary. I have few I can trust to disobey me for the right reasons.”

“I could have been wrong.”

“You weren’t. I was, this time. I will be again. And sometimes you will be. But—you will never be wrong because you don’t care.”

She considered those cool, calm eyes. After a moment, she said…”You care, too.”

He sniffed. “If you say so, I can produce witnesses around the world to prove you a liar. One of them just took a new roommate and left behind an orange paramedic’s blanket.”

“And you’ll still care.”

He shrugged and grimace. “The question is, do you trust me?”

“Do you trust me?”

“If I didn’t we would not be having this conversation.”

“Am I off probation?”

“Yes. But off this assignment. A new roommate with a gun complicates things. I want to pull my teams back. Mary Marston needs a more convincing resume. How would you like to learn some nursing skills?”

“I could do that.” She grinned. “I already know where the major organs are located.”

“I daresay you do,” he said.

And that was the start of a beautiful friendship.


End file.
